Thursday, July 01, 2010

As a teen she was helped along by my Grandparents, Everett and Veda Sexton, in Cour d'Alene Idaho. She meet my father Gene Sexton and they were married in 1963. I was born in 1964 and the family moved to Portland. A few years later my brothers Tim and Stephen came along.

Things were not always easy or simple for my Mother in the decades after my parents divorced. She was married two further times, and suffered from health issues, some serious. But she was caring and thoughtful, and always did what she could for others, even when things were not going well for herself. She loved animals, family, children, and the ocean. She also enjoyed ink drawing and was always reading. Most of all she should be remembered as a person that was by nature ever at the ready to help all those to whom the world was unkind.

It was not always easy, but there were a great many good years, dear memories and many good friends along her way.

The end was a moment of violence; instantaneous and random. Left behind are our thoughts, a few possessions, objects now without context, and a twisted heap of scrap that was once an automobile. The human condition prevents us from ever understanding what has happened. The facts of the matter are of little use. There is no real way to come to grips with the void a person leaves behind when they are gone forever. We are simply left with it. As it is. There is no explanation.

Life is fragile and brief, there is not one day free to be wasted, and not one hope we are not under the strongest force of obligation to pursue, with all the strength we can find.